By ANTONIO PACHECO • July 13, 2017
Los Angeles–based architects Archeon Group and developer Jia Long USA are working to bring a 33-story mixed-use tower to Los Angeles’s subway-adjacent Koreatown neighborhood.
The 420,000-square-foot podium-and-tower complex will bring a 200-key hotel, 250 condominium units, 28,490 square feet of retail, 49,227 square feet of offices, and 545 parking stalls to the area in a somewhat retro-looking dark glass-clad design.
The project’s automobile parking stalls will be joined by 344 bicycle parking spaces, 286 of which will be deployed as long-term bicycle storage lockers. Of the 250 condominium units, 18 will be set aside as “very-low income units,” according to documentation filed with the Los Angeles Department of City Planning.
Documents show that the designers intend to wrap the podium levels in metal louver systems, with storefront areas demarcated by large expanses of reflective glass. The project’s silhouette is outlined in vertical bands of aluminum composite panels that rise up the building’s edges and cut across its midsection, demarcating the end of the hotel and office programs that occupy the lower half of the tower mass from condominiums above. The building’s upper half is studded with wide, glass-framed balconies and a series of penthouse levels that will be occupied as offices by the developer. The tower rises to 450 feet at the highest points of its building’s pointed architectural cap; the cap will frame rooftop amenity spaces.
The project joins a growing list of upcoming mixed-use high-rise projects slated for the areas immediately around L.A.’s Purple Line subway. The subway line is currently being extended to the city’s Westwood neighborhood in conjunction with ongoing regional transit expansions. Construction on the project is set to begin later this year and is expected to conclude in late 2019.
